


Let Nothing You Dismay

by ellydash



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, Suicide, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-06
Updated: 2010-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 03:12:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellydash/pseuds/ellydash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three spirits take Sue Sylvester to Christmases past, present and future. A Glee-flavored retelling of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wherein We Hear, for the First Time, of a Recent Tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> References to suicide; homophobia; ableism; violent images.

Terri Schuester’s dead, to begin with. 

Sue hasn’t seen the body herself, of course, but she’s been lining the pockets of Lima’s EMTs on a regular basis for years. Their reports on overdoses and sexual acts gone terribly wrong provide her with considerable blackmail material. 

She’s received a report from the paramedic on call that night, the first to respond to Will Schuester’s frantic call. She knows exactly where the bullet went in (under the chin; Terri had, apparently, spent a few minutes on Google looking for effective suicide tips), exactly how much blood and brain matter covered the couch she’d done it on (“A whole goddamn lot, ma’am”), even the contents of the note she’d left for Will (the closing line: "Merry Christmas!"). 

This is important: Terri is gone. Without knowing this, you might doubt the wonder of what’s about to happen. You might still doubt it, and you wouldn’t be the only one. Sue Sylvester, despite her intimate knowledge of the crime scene’s forensics, will, as these pages chronicle, shortly be forced into severe self-doubt catalyzed by the question of Terri’s deadness. This is a crisis of confidence the likes of which Sue has not permitted herself since a deeply troubling night in 1991 with  _Miami Vice_ ’s Don Johnson and a jar of peanut butter.

This is the first thing you need to remember: Terri Schuester is dead.


	2. Wherein We Hear, for the First Time, of a Recent Tragedy

One cold afternoon in late December, on the last day of school before the holiday break, Sue Sylvester, who is always the hero of her own stories and never anyone else’s, sits at her desk, scanning sheet music. The Rihanna number she’s considering as background for the Cheerios’ New Year routine has, she decides, distasteful key changes. 

She sets the piece of paper on fire with a gold-plated cigarette lighter, and drops the curling edges into the waste bin, satisfied.

Kurt Hummel appears in the doorway.

“Coach,” he says, and then stops. “Is that – what’s that smell?” 

“Bad music dying,” she replies. “How can I help you, K? Or, more accurately, in what specific way can I pretend to listen to you talk to me while I’m actually thinking about whether I photograph better from my left or right side? The answer to that, by the way, is  _all_ sides, because Sue Sylvester is stunning from every angle.”

Kurt appears unfazed. “I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas before we leave for break. Or happy whatever-you-celebrate. A happy holiday.”

“I appreciate the gesture, Paul Lynde, since I sense it’s born out of a healthy mixture of fear and respect, but, as Jack Kennedy never said, especially to a woman: no thanks. I don’t  _celebrate_ anything except the failure of others.”

“You don’t – do anything for Christmas?” Kurt asks, looking as though he’s not sure he really wants to go down this path. “Coach, I’m just as squeamish about commemorating the birth of the baby Jesus as any fashion-forward gay atheist with a skin regimen Joan Crawford would envy, but even I buy gifts and make gingerbread.”

Sue’s upper lip curls in disgust at the idea of empty gingered calories.

“I don’t  _eat_ it or anything,” Kurt amends, correctly deducing the reason for Sue’s snarl, “but Dad’s a big gingerbread fan, and it’s kind of a tradition with us. Something we did with my mom.”

“That’s  _precious_.” The word rolls in her mouth like a filthy pearl. 

Kurt has enough good sense to stop talking.

“Look,” Sue continues, “this time of year is just an excuse for people to feel better about themselves by dropping a couple of quarters into a Salvation Army tin, or feel worse about themselves because they can’t buy their kids dolls or tractors or whatever the hell kids play with, or not feel anything at all because they’re too busy inhaling spiked eggnog at the office party. It’s a gigantic federally-sanctioned excuse to stick your head in the sand and ignore what’s really important in favor of trivial bullshit like stringing up tiny lights.”

“What’s really important?” He’s genuinely curious. 

“Me,” she says, jamming her thumb into her chest for emphasis. “I am. Sue Sylvester.”

Kurt stares at her. She glares back. 

He shakes his head a bit, to clear it.

“All right,” he begins, “this is completely and utterly insane, and I’m not sure why I’m doing this except, possibly, that I’m testing the limits of my masochistic tolerance – ”

“I would’ve thought Schuester’s weekly theme challenges were doing that all on their own –”

“ – but I’d like to ask you something.”

Sue watches him, eyes constricted. 

“Would you –” He’s redder than Brenda Castle’s nose after a bender. “Would you like to join us for dinner on Christmas Day? My dad and me? And Finn and his mom? We’re having tofurkey.”

She hadn’t expected this, not even from Kurt Hummel. Sue’s come to regard Kurt as someone cast out of a familiar mold, with recognizable angles and moves and resistance; and so somewhere deep within her (though she’d rather assist Mary Lou Retton on the uneven bars than admit it) she feels a twinge of pleasure at being acknowledged.

But dinner with Hummel and his family? Making small conversation with Hudson’s mother over cranberry sauce? Feigning interest in her miserable, small little life and her son’s pathetic passer rating? And all in the name, Sue thinks, of what, when you get down to it, really amounts to not much more than  _charity_.

“You’ll have to live without my presence gracing your blue-collar Brady Bunch episode,” she tells him. “I’m taking off for my condo in Ensenada, where I plan to spend the Day That Will Not Be Named with endlessly refreshing margaritas and endlessly refreshing hardbodies.”

Kurt can’t stop himself from shuddering at the mental picture she’s given him.

Sue shrugs. “If you think that’s bad, Prudy, you should be happy I’m not accepting your invitation. Believe it or not, I maintain something of a verbal filter on school property, because, unlike one William Schuester, I believe in appropriate boundaries.”

He doesn’t look as though he believes her, which is quite all right by Sue, who always feels happier when she’s unsettled a student. 

“Okay,” he says, and she can hear the not-insubstantial note of relief in his voice. “I just thought I’d ask.”

She doesn’t thank him.

“Ms. Sylvester?”

It’s Rachel Berry. And ( _Good God, is Will sending her these bottom-feeders on purpose, to drive her up the wall?_ ) she’s brought Finn Hudson with her. Rachel’s gripping Finn’s arm tightly, and the shrill smile on her face is wide enough to wrap around her head several times over. Finn just looks like he wants to throw up.

“Can we speak to you?” Rachel asks, her voice a touch higher than its normal range. “Just for a moment? It’s important.” 

Sue considers throwing a trophy at her, one of the small ones. It wouldn’t do much damage – she’d like to avoid another conversation with Figgins so soon after the Ashley Berkowitz glitter machine debacle, so less damage is, for once, a plus – but it’d light a fire under Rachel’s hideous plastic ballerina flats. (Sue's not being unnecessarily cruel here; they really are awful shoes.)

“Nothing,” she says, finally, “is as important as my preserved sense of justice, and right now that sense of justice is being horribly violated by your continued presence in this room. And in this school. Get out. Go serenade a menorah.”

Kurt, who possesses a sense of self-preservation Rachel Berry sorely lacks, chooses this moment to duck out of Sue’s office. Finn watches him go, clearly wishing he could execute a similar exit strategy. 

Evidently on a suicide mission, Rachel steps further into Sue’s office, pulling Finn with her.

“Ms. Sylvester,” Rachel continues, “Finn and I are terribly concerned by the severe dearth of adequate vocal training available to the disadvantaged minority populations of Lima. As a Jewish woman with two gay dads and the burden of extreme talent, I fully understand the pain of being a minority, and want to spend this holiday season helping others who do not share my class privilege.” 

“Didn’t hear a word you said after ‘Sylvester,’ Berry. I treated myself to a middle-ear implant last week that selectively edits out all speech that doesn’t concern me. Which, as it turns out, is pretty much everything besides my name and the phrase ‘sex explosion.’ Go figure.”

Rachel elbows Finn in the ribs.

“Ow!” Finn protests.

“ _Say your line_ ,” hisses Rachel.

“Will you – ” He pauses, looks at Rachel for reassurance; she nods at him firmly. “Will you donate money to help poor people get the singing training they deserve?”

Rachel smiles, approvingly, and turns to Sue. Sue’s forehead is crinkled in disbelief.

“Am I hearing you correctly? Poors singing? Holy Mother of Lourdes, Rocco, Mercy and David, what is  _wrong_ with you, Berry? If society’s grubs want to massage their vocal cords, they’re better off practicing their excuses for the welfare agency. Schuester dumb enough to give you money for your vanity exercise?”

“He gave us twenty dollars,” says Rachel, proudly. “Coach Beiste gave us fifteen.”

“ _Shocking_. What’d Tracy Flick here make you pocket up, Hudson?”

“Uh – I had a couple bucks left over from a lawnmowing gig.”

Sue stands up. “All right, Donny and Marie,” she snaps. “Before I completely lose my patience and sue your parents for exceptionally incompetent breeding.  _Out_.”

Rachel, remarkably, is not quivering in her flats.

“Why do you have to be so mean all the time, Ms. Sylvester?” she asks, plaintively. 

“Berry, as famed 19th century sociopath George Hearst once said, during his first speech as the Prime Minister of South Dakota: haters gonna hate.”

  
-

 

She sees Will through the window on the music room door, as she’s passing through the hallway on her way out. He’s got his back to her, seated at the piano. He’s not playing.

Sue considers calling out something to him, maybe a crack about his poverty or his shoulders (she’s spent the last month trying to convince him that one’s lower than the other) but then remembers Terri and thinks better of it.

If you were to suggest to Sue that holding back is her way of giving a Christmas gift to Will, she would probably punch you in the nose or maybe the stomach, and you would realize the error of your ways and never, ever suggest anything to Sue Sylvester again. 

  
-

  
It’s snowing, hard. 

Sue’s house is irritatingly cold and dark when she arrives home. Imelda’s taken the week off to spend with her family, a request that Sue granted her only because Imelda threatened to have a “little conversation” with Will Schuester, and they’d probably speak Spanish together or something. She’s not sure, but getting blackmailed in Spanish seems somehow worse than getting blackmailed in English. And so Sue returns tonight to a house that hasn’t been pre-warmed (she prefers a sub-tropical indoor climate) or pre-lit (no shadows, because Sue firmly believes that shadows can’t be trusted).

Imelda left a refrigerator full of pre-blended protein shakes, anyway, which is almost as good as having her here to yell at.

On her way to the kitchen, Sue sees something move out of the corner of her eye, in the corner of the living room where she’s got her college trophy cases. 

She spins toward it, her hand automatically touching her hip in search of a non-existent weapon. 

Nothing. There’s nothing there.

 _Get a hold of yourself, Sylvester_ , she thinks, staring at a particularly large trophy with the inscription OHIO STATE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL 1980 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS, and while she’s looking at it the metal basketball at the top of the trophy  _shifts_ , and it’s no longer a basketball facsimile, it’s the head of Terri Schuester. Her little mouth is distorted, wide, and it might be a yawn and it might be a scream.

Sue stares at her altered trophy; her skin hums; the fine hair on her arms rises. 

As quickly as it appeared, Terri’s little head is gone.

“God, what – ” Sue starts to say, out loud, and then realizes she’s broken her cardinal rule of never talking out loud to yourself, because that’s the marker of weakness. She’s not shaking, she  _isn’t_ , it’s just that her blood sugar is low because she skipped out on her afternoon supplemental shake and that always sets her a bit on edge. 

Sue hasn’t thought much about Terri Schuester in the weeks since her suicide; as a general rule she tries hard not to think about anything connected to Will Schuester if she can help it. Sue wouldn’t say, exactly, that she liked Terri (‘like’ being an infuriatingly milquetoast verb) but she’d grudgingly respected the woman’s level of crazy, even if the objective of her insanity, keeping Will in her clutches, seemed incredibly misguided. 

If she were honest with herself, though – and this being Sue Sylvester, the hypothetical will remain hypothetical – she’s a little disturbed by the circumstances of Terri’s death. How  _angry_ she must’ve been at Will, to do herself in on the couch they’d bought together, in their old home, leaving her body there for him to find. Sue understands that kind of anger. She admires it, even; there’s a kind of beauty in the fresh, sharp propulsion of pure rage. She even understands how Will Schuester could’ve been its target, especially for a woman who’d been dumb enough to share a bed with the man for more than a decade.

Sue Sylvester knows what Terri did not: the importance of packaging anger, of slicing it into manageable portions and making clear, informed choices about when and where to deliver. This is the difference between herself and Terri: control. 

Sue, however, is not capable of or interested in sustained self-reflection, because she believes navel-gazing is for unimportant narcissists (Sue is a very, very important narcissist). And so she decides to spend her evening with a protein shake and the latest issue of Cheerleader Weekly, with a pen to underline mentions of her name. And she pushes away that slight sense of nausea she feels when she thinks about Terri Schuester and whatever troubling moment of weakness caused her to hallucinate that grotesque image.

  
-

  
It’s snowing harder.

Sue dozes in her ergonomic leather reclining chair, images flitting past behind her eyes. Her cheerleaders execute perfect flips and turns, defying laws of physics. Will Schuester polishes her trophies. Jean’s hand is on her arm.  _Susie_ , Jean whispers, and Sue says, sharply,  _don’t you call me that_  – 

The television blinks on. 

The sound of it jolts Sue out of her light sleep and onto her feet before she’s sure what’s happened. Recovering quickly, she looks for the remote – she must’ve leaned on it, somehow – and yes, it’s there. Across the room, on the couch, where she couldn’t possibly have touched it.

When she realizes she can hear the TV in her bedroom, too, that’s when she feels the first lick of fear down her spine.

“If someone’s there,” she snarls, her body tensed, “you better prepare yourself for an anatomy lesson, because I’m gonna make you feel every single bone in your body.”

There’s silence. Then she hears footsteps. Heavy, slow, from the back of the house, maybe the laundry room. Coming closer.

Sue grabs the nearest trophy, a hunting commendation with convenient antler prongs, and assumes an offensive position, heels barely touching the floor, knees bent and ready to spring.

When the agent of the footsteps enters the living room, several things happen: first, the TV picture flares and flickers briefly, as if in recognition, and then snaps off. Second, Sue Sylvester stumbles backwards in shock, falling into her chair, and the trophy weapon drops to the floor with a loud thump. 

Third, Terri Schuester says, “Well, hi there, Sue.”

And it is, despite what every law of science tells us is possible, Terri. She’s wearing what Sue knows, thanks to the very thorough paramedic’s report, was Terri’s last outfit, and she looks perfectly normal – or as normal as a dead woman might be expected to look. The only out-of-place accessory is a light blue bandanna, bound tightly around her head and chin.

“Did I freak you out?” Terri asks, sweetly. “I was thinking about keeping all that going, maybe over a couple of nights, but I’m trying this  _nice_ thing now. It’s harder than it looks.”

Sue is momentarily, and maybe for the first time in recorded history, unable to speak.

“For crying out  _loud_.” Terri’s hands are on her hips. “Lady, you’d think with the gigantic favor I’m about to do you, you’d be a little more welcoming.  _I_  certainly don’t get off on people being terrified of  _me_.”

“You,” Sue begins, slowly, “are – not – there.”

Terri smiles at her. 

“Oh, I’m not?” she says. “You don’t believe I’m here?”

“No.” Sue’s not sure why she’s having a conversation with what she’s absolutely, positively sure is her own psyche. “I must be more run down than I thought – ”

She clamps her mouth shut on what, if unstifled, would be a shriek. Terri’s untying the bandanna around her head and chin, and her jaw  _unhinges_ from the rest of her face; it’s an unholy mass of shot-mangled pulp and bone, and it drops so much farther than it should, it drops slowly, and it rests on her sternum. 

Somehow, out of that flesh tangle, Terri says Sue’s name. 

Sue shakes her head:  _no, no, no_.

“I made a mistake,” Terri tells her. “I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I drove away the one person who cared about me through all of it. And when I died, I died alone and miserable and I ruined my  _hair_. Now I can’t take any of that back. That’s why I’m here, Sue. I’m here because I’d like to keep you from making my mistakes. You’re just as miserable as I was. I can’t change the choices I made, but  _you_ –” The reanimated Terri, apparently, enjoys drama as much as the living Terri. “ _You_ can reevaluate your life before it’s too late. Get some perspective. Pet a dog, say nice things to people. You know, basic shit.”

“What – ”

“Now, you’re a smart woman, and so you’re probably wondering why I’ve developed this sudden interest in you when we’ve had all of, what, three conversations before this? Four? Well, Sue, I’ll be honest. I’ve had a lot of time to indulge in voyeurism over the past three weeks. I see a lot of myself in you. We’re both bitches who don’t know when to quit.” She pauses. “Also, I’m sort of  _bored_.”

“I,” Sue begins, still not quite believing she’s having a conversation with a woman who’s been buried for three weeks, “am nothing like you. I’d never do something so fantastically idiotic as off myself because that vest-addicted Jaime Escalante wannabe you married developed a sexual obsession with a member of the primate family.”

“Probably not,” Terri admits. “But, as Dr. Phil would say, you’re committing  _emotional_ suicide.”

Sue wonders, briefly, if this is some kind of bizarre undead  _Intervention_ spinoff, and says so out loud. Terri laughs at this: a short, clipped bark. It’s not quite right, her laugh, like she’s forgotten just a little how to make the sound. 

“No trip to a California rehab for you, Coach,” she says. “We’ll do things a little differently, and it’s going to be weird, and it’s going to freak you out. And that’s a good thing, because, honey, it’s about time someone got you out of your comfort zone. You’re going to be haunted.”

The only possible response to this is a look of incredulity so intense that a furrowed line deep enough to carry water wrinkles to life between Sue’s eyes. 

“Not just by me,” Terri clarifies, somewhat unnecessarily. “By three others – spirits, ghosts, guides, whatever the hell you want to call them – they’ll pick you up, right here, on Christmas Eve. That has a nice allegorical ring to it, doesn't it? One a.m.” She carefully tucks what’s left of her obscene jaw back into the nest of the handkerchief, tying it again around her head.

Sue protests, audibly, but she’s lacking her usual fire, and maybe it’s because she recognizes something familiar in Terri’s comparison, but she also can’t stop thinking about that godawful ruin of a jaw. It’s like something out of a horror film or a Heidi Montag surgery recording.

Terri looks at her, into her. Sue can’t help it; she flinches.

“Merry Christmas!” Terri says, brightly. 

They’re the same words she left for Will, in her suicide note. 

  
-

  
When Sue’s in bed, she drags the covers up to her chin (but not over her head. Over her head would mean admitting to the kind of fear she’s promised herself never, ever to allow). 

She thinks about the doors she knows were locked and the woman she knows is dead, and she tries to say “Bullshit!” out loud, but only the first syllable makes it; the rest sticks to her dry tongue.

The world drops away, and she sleeps.


	3. Wherein a Spirit that Bears A Striking Resemblance to Kurt Hummel Escorts Sue Sylvester through Previous Christmases, and Sue Sylvester is Not Happy, but Then Again, When is She, Honestly

When she opens her eyes, it’s still dark. Darker than usual. Sue raises her head, peers at the window facing out onto her street, looking for the answering glimmer of streetlamps, but there’s nothing. Power failure, maybe.

She grabs her cell phone on the nightstand, checks the time: 12:57am. And above it, to her shock, the date: December 24th. 

“No way,” she says, out loud. “No damn way I could’ve slept through two days. I would’ve missed meetings – interviews – photoshoots – Josh Groban’s sexts – ”

She checks the phone again, just in case. No voicemails. No missed calls. No texts, explicit or otherwise. 

 _Terri_. 

But Terri was a dream. Has to be. Because admitting otherwise would mean admitting she’s gone off the deep end, and if there’s anything Sue Sylvester knows, it’s how to keep her feet on the pool floor. 

She decides something’s wrong with the phone. She’s sure. Back to sleep, then. Sue needs eight hours to reach maximum levels of malevolency.

Instead, she grabs her phone again. 

12:59am. 

 _Spirits, ghosts, guides, whatever the hell you want to call them – they’ll pick you up, right here, on Christmas Eve. That has a nice allegorical ring to it, doesn’t it? One a.m.  
_  
Sue watches the hour turn on the little glowing screen, and looks up into the dark room, eyes straining. 

Nothing happens. Nothing moves. Nothing speaks.

“I  _knew_ it,” she exults, and flops on her side, nestling under the covers, feeling a small rush of victory (against whom, she’s not really sure).

“Your clock’s about thirty seconds fast,” the voice of Kurt Hummel says, and the lamp on her nightstand switches on.

Sue bolts upright, back against the headboard, squinting into the bright onslaught. She’s not imagining things, she’s  _not_ : that’s really Ladyface himself sitting at the foot of her bed, smiling at her. Smiling! 

“Jesus Ciccone  _Christ_ , Hummel, have you lost your goddamned mind?” she roars. “Is breaking into people’s houses in the middle of the night some new gay trend? Do I need to invest in some kind of gay alarm system that blasts the Village People and ejects tiny rainbow flags when it senses your presence?” 

“I’m not Kurt Hummel,” Kurt Hummel informs her, still smiling.

Sue gapes. “One of those locker slams must’ve dislodged something in your brain. Get the hell out of my house, Little ‘Mo Peep, before I call the cheer mafia on you. And yes, there’s a cheer mafia, and there’s a reason you don’t know about them, _because they don’t want you to_.”

The boy who claims he’s not Kurt Hummel but looks and sounds and speaks and moves exactly like him – he’s even wearing some hideous draped thing so ugly it’s got to be designer-made – says, “Terri’s idea. She thought you might go along with this visitation/time-travel idea somewhat more readily if your guides were familiar faces. I thought it was fairly ridiculous myself, but I’m not calling the shots on this one.”

Sue stares at the boy she absolutely, positively knows is Kurt Hummel, just like she knows the date is December 22nd and that she dreamt Terri Schuester’s visit and that Justin Bieber is the belated result of a drug-influenced lab experiment by Kurt Cobain. “Prove it,” she challenges. “Tell me something you – something Hummel couldn’t know.”

“You have a disabled sister who lives in a nursing home.”

“Public record, Ladyface. Try again.”

“You’d rather be coaching basketball than cheerleading.” 

“Anyone who’s seen my college trophies and wasn’t dumber than a box of Will Schuester’s hair could’ve guessed that. One more try, and then I’m throwing you out of this house just like Uncle Phil used to toss out Will Smith’s idiot friend on  _Fresh Prince_. Only I’ve got significantly more front porch Grecian columns.”

There’s a brief pause, and when Kurt Hummel begins to speak, his voice is no longer Kurt Hummel’s.

“Hey, Sylvester,” he hisses, looking straight at Sue. It’s a girl’s voice, thin, reedy, slightly lower in pitch than Hummel’s dulcet intonation. The flesh on Sue’s arms pimples into goosebumps; her body remembers the speaker before she does. “Hey, dyke. I’m talking to you. What’s the matter, I’m not good enough for you? I don’t meet your  _standards_?”

Sue’s breathing hard. 

“That’s Janice Orlofsky,” she mutters. “That’s Janice. I haven’t – in more than thirty years – how could you – how could –”

“Sorry about that.” The thing, spirit, whatever, sounds like Hummel again, and Sue never, in a million years, would’ve thought she’d ever be so glad to hear Kurt Hummel’s voice. “It was the quickest way to get your attention.”

“I’ll bet.” Her pulse is still ricocheting wildly. Fucking Janice Orlofsky, with her perfect Marcia Brady hair and her perfect Ryan O’Neal-esque boyfriend; Janice Orlofsky had made Sue Sylvester’s high school life ( _Susie, I was Susie then_ ) a living hell. “What the hell do you want from me?”

“Your time,” Not Kurt says, simply, and extends a hand to her. 

She doesn’t think she takes it – she’s sure she doesn’t. 

The room blurs anyway, wipes away like a surrealist’s fantasy. 

___

  
They’re standing in front of a house. Split-level, pre-war, totally unremarkable. 

“Look familiar?” Not Kurt enquires, almost coquettishly. Almost like he’s proud of bringing her here.

“Don’t waste my time, Teen Spirit.” She’s staring at the picture window, trying to see inside. It’s daytime now, probably still early morning, judging by the weak light. “You know, I could be working on my election reform legislation to legitimate ballot box stuffing for people with dissociative identity disorder. Or I could be watching  _Hoarders_.”

“We’re going to watch something else.” He gestures towards the front door with a little bow that smacks of Hummel’s ridiculous affectation. “After you.”

Sue makes it several steps into the living room before she understands what she’s seeing, and it stops her in her tracks. It’s her sister, sitting at the base of the Christmas tree. Jean at seventeen: smiling, healthy, beautiful, her hands busy tearing apart the wrapped box in her lap. “Oh,” Sue gasps, and claps her hand to her mouth. “Oh –  _Jeanie_.”

“You all right?” Not Kurt asks her. 

“Can she – can she see me?” 

“No. She’s a shadow. They’re all shadows of things that once were. Shadows don’t have consciousness.”

Sue swallows hard, choking back the swell of pain in her throat. She has photos, sure, of the two of them as kids; one’s on her desk at school, and she looks at it every day; some days it’s the only thing that makes her smile. But this – Jean here in the room with her, her face unwrinkled, her body strong – to be here with a young Jean so soon after her last visit to the nursing home, where she watched her big sister’s mouth twitch with pain, her hands tremble, and pretend she’s just fine, you  _worry_ about me too much, Sue – it’s overwhelming. 

When her younger self runs into the living room, it’s less of the dissonant shock it might’ve otherwise been, and more of a relief; a welcome distraction from Jean.

 _Fourteen_ , Sue thinks, taking in her younger self’s cropped hair, her oversized men’s pajamas (much more comfortable than nightgowns; she’d discovered this the summer before high school).  _God. I used to be fourteen_. 

Susie’s shouting, “Jean! Not yet! Remember, I told you we’re not opening presents until I’ve finished basting the turkey.”

“Please,” Jean begs. “Just this first one. I think I know what it is.”

“It’s  _Court and Spark_ ,” Sue says out loud, remembering. “Joni Mitchell. We played that damn album every day for three months.” 

“If you  _know_ ,” Susie’s admonishing Jean, “than you don’t need to open it yet, do you? Just wait fifteen minutes – I need to get the turkey started now, otherwise it won’t be ready for dinner tonight.”

The front doorknob turns, and at the sound of the key in the lock they all look up – Susie, Jean, Sue, Not Kurt. Both Sue and Susie groan in recognition; they know what's coming.

The door opens, revealing Doris Sylvester in all her manic glory: Doris with bright red hair and several suitcases and her passport hanging around her neck.

“We’ve got a lead on Mengele!” she announces, triumphant. “Your father got a message to me – he’s in Brazil right now – said his informant in Curitiba has verifiable intel. He’s in some shack on the city limits. Not nearly miserable enough for that sick bastard.”

Susie and Jean stare at their mother. 

“Hi, Mom,” Jean says, carefully.

Doris rushes in, tosses her suitcases on the couch. “Hi,” she responds, without looking at her eldest daughter. “It’s good to see you, girls. I’m only here for a few minutes between connecting flights – thought I’d drop in, check on you two, make sure there aren’t any problems. Oh, and grab a few extra items of clothing. Merry Christmas!” She laughs. Her daughters don’t.

When Susie speaks, it’s slow, controlled. “It’s been  _four months_ , Mom.”

1974, Sue realizes. Doris and Jack Sylvester’s longest absence to date – they’d left for Eastern Europe on Josef Mengele’s trail in late August, just before her first day of high school. Doris had informed her that she was in charge, to look out for her sister (as if there was some way she wouldn’t? Jean had always been her responsibility, ever since she’d been old enough to understand that Jean was different), and here’s the checkbook; there’s some emergency cash in your father’s desk.

 _It’s our job, Susie_ , her mother had told her protesting daughter, before they’d left.  _We have a responsibility to bring these men to justice. Millions and millions of people, kidlet. They tortured human beings, they butchered them, and if we don’t do our job their deaths go unanswered_. 

 _You remember what I told you about the Third Reich’s policies on the disabled. You remember what I told you about what they did to little girls like Jeanie. You remember the pictures I showed you.  
_  
Yes, Sue remembered. 

“I know how long it’s been,” Doris snaps. “I’m not retarded.” 

Jean winces.

“So catch me up, then. What have the two of you been busying yourselves with?”

“Well,” Susie says, slowly, looking at her sister. “I went out for basketball in September.”

“They got a  _girl_ basketball team at your school? That what I’m spending my tax dollars on now?”

“The girls' team is dumb - it's just some Title IX-funded excuse for avoiding gym. I tried out for the boys’ team. And I made varsity. Coach says I’m the best point guard he’s had in four years.”

“I watch her play, Mom,” Jean chimes in. “She’s really, really good. The boys are scared of her.” 

Doris stands up, and turns to her youngest daughter. “You’re doing this to make me angry, Susie,” she mutters, “and I can’t say I’m surprised. I know I’ve been gone a lot, left a lot on your shoulders –”

“Everything,” Susie cries out. “You left us –”

“But,” continues Doris. “We’ve had this conversation before. At some point, your father and I will both be gone, and it’ll be you that has to take care of – ” She jerks her thumb in Jean’s direction. “You need to learn sooner rather than later how much work it takes.”

“I know you’re talking about me,” Jean snaps. “You can use my name.”

“You tell her, Jeanie,” Sue crows, and Not Kurt looks at her; smiles.

Doris chooses to ignore this, and narrows her eyes. “You’re fourteen years old. Fifteen soon. That’s plenty old enough to start accepting your responsibilities, start creating some reasonable goals for yourself. Basketball? That’ll do precisely squat for you, besides make people think you’re a lesbian.” She pauses. “Speaking of which, that godawful haircut of yours makes you look like Carol Brady auditioning for  _The Killing of Sister George_.”

“I,” Susie says, through gritted teeth, “like playing basketball. I’m not going to stop just because you don’t approve of it.”

“No, you’re going to  _play_ because I don’t approve. Because you’re a contrary little bitch who’s decided to get back at me for trying to teach you that you can’t rely on anyone to help you out. It’s the most important lesson you’ll ever learn, and if you’re lucky, Susie, some day you’ll be smart enough to thank me for it.” 

Sue’s staring hard at her younger self, this tall, gangly girl with jagged short hair (Jean wasn’t exactly a whiz with the scissors) and an expression that hasn’t quite made the transition from defensive to aggressive. She’s seeing what she’s spent the last thirty years trying to forget. The name-calling. Marie McCullough staring at Susie, turning her head to whisper into Janice Orlofsky’s ear. The way Susie’d kept her head tucked down in the hallways, thinking maybe if she didn’t look at anyone they wouldn’t look at her. The sharp mewl of pain from that broken finger, when she’d smashed Bobby Gates’s nose for calling her sister a fucking retard (she hadn’t secured her fist properly, she’d been so angry). How, by senior year, everyone gave wide berth to that crazy bitch Sylvester, who’d kick your ass if you looked at her cross-eyed.

Susie wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

 _Don’t you dare cry_ , Sue thinks, fiercely.  _Don’t give her that.  
_  
“Oh,  _please_ ,” Doris snaps. “You think this is hard? Try bunking at Buchenwald for a few weeks. Try being Mengele’s favorite specimen.  _That’s_ hard.” 

Susie purses her mouth, looks at Jean. Jean stares at her lap, the Joni Mitchell album still unopened. 

 _Can’t win with her_ , Sue thinks.  _Don’t bother_.

Susie doesn’t. 

“Let’s try another Christmas,” Not Kurt says, and snaps his fingers.

___

  
They’re inside a small apartment, worn looking, the little holly wreath on the card table and the three-foot Christmas tree in the corner somehow making the room less cheerful, not more. 

On the couch, Susie – no, not Susie anymore; she’d dropped that name after high school and she’s Sue now, Sue in her early twenties, just out of college – Sue nestles against a tall man with curly hair and a lazy, sweet smile. She’s got her fingers in it, playing with the soft coils, and she looks up at him, her face gentle. 

“This some kind of masochistic exercise?” the older Sue snaps at Not Kurt, turning away from the scene on the couch. “First my mother, now David? Wanna get Mary Lou Retton down here too, have her do a few perky backflips and quote Ronald Reagan at us?”

“Shh,” Not Kurt admonishes, holding his forefinger to his lips. “Watch.”

“Your hair isn’t half bad, you know,” the younger Sue says to David, tugging on it just a bit. Her smile is lopsided, a little strained, like being happy isn’t easy for her – but it’s sincere. 

Sue snorts, derisively. “Oh,  _please_."

Not Kurt shushes her again. (He’s lucky he’s already dead; Sue shoots him a glare that, if aimed at a human being, would cause internal damage.)

“Sue,” David says, slowly. He reaches for the hand exploring his hair, and folds it into his own hands, takes a deep breath. “Sue, I’ve decided something. I’m signing up with VISTA. And I want you to come with me.”

The younger Sue recoils. “What about med school? You said sports medicine was your passion – what the hell happened, David? I know that paintball hit the other day got you just outside the temple, but God, I didn’t think I smacked you  _that_ hard.”

“My cousin’s been sending me letters from Montana – he’s on the Crow reservation there – it’s moving, the stuff he writes. I really think I could make a difference. Help build an agricultural co-op, participate in literacy and substance abuse programs. Hell, I could teach.”

“ _Teach_?” the younger Sue sneers. “You mean give up a lucrative career conditioning football players’ ankles so you can teach poor minorities how to read and not get drunk? Let ‘em drink, it’s the only good thing they’ve got going.”

David looks puzzled. “Since when’ve you been so down on teaching?”

“Since my boyfriend decided it was a good idea to abandon the future we’ve been planning so he could reenact  _Goodbye, Mr. Chips_.” Sue pushes herself away from David. “Tell me, just how the hell am I supposed to pursue professional ball in Montana or South Dakota or wherever you’re planning on economic martyrdom?”

“Sue,” David says, gently. “I know you love basketball, but the chances of you playing professionally are zilch. There’s a reason the WBL went under – no one wants to watch girls on the court. I’m sorry. I didn’t make the rules. That’s just how it is.”

Both Sues scowl at him. The elder Sue bares her teeth in a snarl twisted with two and a half decades of resentment.

“You get this straight, David,” Sue snaps. “Whatever Sue Sylvester sets her mind to do, she  _does_. I don’t give a damn that there isn’t a women’s league right now. If I have to I’ll start another one myself. And I’ll turn it into the craze it’d already be if this country weren’t filled with idiots who think good sports entertainment is watching Dan Marino throw a pigskin to Mark Clayton seven million times in a row. Giving all that up so you can babysit alcoholics isn’t exactly what I’d call a happy trade. And where does Jean fit into all of this? You know that wherever I go –”

“Jean goes,” David finishes. He sounds exhausted. “I know. You’ve made that perfectly clear. Jean can come with us.” 

“Jesus, David, it’s not that simple.” 

“Yeah, honey,” he says. “It is. You love me, I love you, nothing simpler than that.”

Sue rests her forehead in the palm of her hand, and doesn’t look at David. “I’ll think about it,” she says, finally. “You asshole.”

He smiles at her, strokes her hair. “You do that. Let’s open presents, now, okay? I think you’ll like what I got you.”

“I  _didn’t_  like it,” the older Sue shouts at David, who’s still smiling at his girlfriend, oblivious. “I was  _stupid_ enough to pretend like I did, but I  _hated_ that goddamn necklace.” She turns on Not Kurt, furious. “What’s the lesson here, Casper? That I should’ve done what he wanted and gone to that migrant camp in California? Uprooted Jeanie from her independent living program? Abandoned my career? Just so I wouldn’t be alone? That what you want me to take away from this little trip down Misery Lane?”

“This isn’t a morality play, Sue,” Not Kurt says, placidly. “There’s no lesson here.”

“Bullshit, there isn’t. I’m done with this.” Her voice is ragged, shaky. “Take me home.”

The room around her explodes in a burst of light. 

And then Sue’s in her bedroom again, her familiar dark bedroom that’s miles away from her mother, miles away from David, miles away from the choices she made and the regrets she can’t afford.

The bed is softer than it’s ever been; it folds around her, swallowing her, and again, she sleeps.


	4. Wherein the Brittany Pierce of Christmas Present Redecorates Sue’s Spare Bedroom; Rachel Berry Convenes a Meeting with Puck, Artie and Tina; Finn Hudson Invites a Reluctant Will Schuester to Christmas Dinner at the Hummel-Hudson’s

Sue Sylvester has a motto:  _be prepared_. Someday she plans to get it stitched on a sampler. This sampler will also feature an embroidered rendering of her face.

Recently, Becky Jackson’s informed her that there’s a Disney villain, some kind of tiger or gerbil or something, who shares her philosophy. Sue’s considering adding this film to her Netflix queue, once she gets around to grilling Becky for more details, but  _Predator_  takes priority. She needs inspiration to spice up her bear trap blueprint.

Under normal circumstances, when dead people aren’t showing up in her living room, this motto works for Sue. It currently seems to be collapsing around her, joining Will Schuester’s dreams of being relevant in the trash heap of nice-try-no-cigar.

This time, when she wakes up, it’s to Nat King Cole’s voice. 

Sue grabs her phone, looking for the time. 1:23am. She has the odd sense that she’s overslept. 

 _Everybody knows, a turkey and some mistletoe_ , Nat croons, somewhere nearby,  _will help to make the season bright. Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow, will find it hard to sleep tonight._

“Yeah,” Sue mutters, “because the little snot-rags waterlogged themselves with turkey. Probably ate the mistletoe, too.” She swings herself out of bed, rubbing her eyes, and follows Nat’s voice down the short hallway. The door to her spare bedroom is closed, but light borders its edges, and she can hear Nat coming from inside. She closes her hand around the knob, and doesn't hesitate: she turns it, and pushes in. 

It’s still her spare bedroom. But just barely.

First of all, there’s flocked snow  _everywhere_ , and it’s Pepto-Bismol pink. The mattress on the spare bed’s been wrapped in wrapping paper – featuring repeated images of cats wearing Santa hats – and the pillows are gone, replaced with giant gold ribbons. There’s a tree in the corner next to the dresser, and it’s also flocked pink, groaning with the weight of what looks like Sears’ ornament discount bin. Purple paper snowflakes dangle from the ceiling. And Nat is still singing. Somewhere. 

The last thing Sue notices, once she’s processed the system shock of finding her spare bedroom transformed into what looks like the set of  _Barbie Does Santa_ , is that there’s a ladder propped up against the wall by the window – and Brittany Pierce is on it. She’s wearing her Cheerios uniform, and the bright red of it is like a visual assault on the pink flocking she’s managed to get stuck in her hair.

Brittany smiles at her, slowly, with what looks like real pleasure. “Hi, Sue,” she says, swinging slightly on her ladder. “I got here a little early and then I thought I’d let you sleep in while I made your house Christmassy. I haven’t finished yet. I still have glitter. And I figure maybe I’ll add some baby dogs to go with the cats on the wrapping paper, except the baby dogs would be alive.”

“You’re not Brittany.” Even discounting what she’d gathered from the bizarro Kurt Hummel experience, she knows something’s just a little off about this girl: the real Brittany’s never used Sue’s first name. Sure, she’d spent several months calling Sue “Coach DeGeneres,” after a sick day watching Ellen’s show had left her convinced that the two were the same person – and there was that one weird, nauseating moment last year when Brittany, possibly concussed after a collapsed pyramid, had looked up at Sue’s looming face and said, “I’m sorry I dropped the spoon, Mom” – but never her first name.

“No,” the facsimile agrees, pleasantly. “I’m not. I’ve been practicing, though. I did a headstand for seventeen minutes when I first got here, and when I stood upright again it was like I was underwater. I’m pretty sure the door talked.” She reaches into a little pouch dangling off her hip, and grabs a handful of gold glitter; tosses it into the air. “Ooh,” she murmurs, watching it cascade to the ground. 

“Glitter,” Sue proclaims, pointing at the little glinty bits now decorating her carpet, “offends me on a cosmetic, aesthetic and moral level. What you’ve done to this room as a whole is  _decorative assault_. Which, if I had anything to say about it, would be punishable by continued exposure to Paula Deen and her deep-fried abominations from caloric hell.”

Imitation Brittany looks at her, still smiling slightly, unperturbed. Whomever – whatever’s behind that smile isn’t nearly as good at inhabiting Brittany Pierce as Not Kurt Hummel was at his role. There’s a sharpness behind Imitation Brittany’s eyes that’s perennially missing from the real girl. Maybe a little understanding, too.

Sue fidgets, just a little, under that smile. 

“Don’t you have somewhere to take me?” she barks. “Let’s get this over with.”

Imitation Brittany hops to the floor, with a smooth jump that betrays her athleticism. “I thought you’d never ask,” she says, crossing the room, and she holds out her hand to Sue, just like Not Kurt had the night before. “Let’s go say hi to a few people.”

This time, she’s pretty sure she takes the offered hand, because she can feel the girl’s cold fingers wrap tightly around her own, but she can’t be positive. Her vision’s darkening. She thinks she sees her room peeling, strips of pink-flocked wall curling down like fruit. 

  
__

Sue hears Rachel Berry first, before the room blushes to life in front of her eyes. (She finds it utterly remarkable that a girl with such prodigious singing talent has what Sue believes may be the most annoying speaking voice on the planet, after Kelly Ripa.)

Rachel’s sitting – no, not sitting,  _holding court_  – at the head of an unremarkable dining room table. To her left, Noah Puckerman slouches in his chair, a lazy half-smile tweaking the corner of his mouth. On her right: two kids Sue knows instinctively belong to Schuester, even if she doesn’t remember their names. They’re wearing his perennial hangdog expression like it’s been bred into their incestuous glee club gene pool. 

“Artie and Tina,” Imitation Brittany reminds her, pointing. “And that’s Puck.”

“I  _know_ Puckerman,” Sue informs her. “Intimately.” 

Brittany crinkles her forehead in confusion.

“He got assigned to my gym for clean-up detention a couple months ago. I was bored. And don’t you dare judge me – I’m pretty sure he’s at least twenty-six.” She moons at Puck, briefly, then refocuses. “What the hell are we doing here? Where are we?”

“Rachel Berry’s house.”

“God, it’s like Pottery Barn threw up its discounted 2005 collection in here. Isn’t Berry the unholy spawn of gay men? Did Bravo and Kurt Hummel's tumblr  _lie_ to me about the correlation between gayness and fabulous taste? Gary Busey’s coke salon had better décor.”

“I would like,” Berry’s saying, primly, “to thank you all for coming today. Especially you, Noah, as I understand you had to make an extra effort by clearing this visit with your parole officer.”

“Ain’t no thing,” Puck drawls.“All in the name of Jew solidarity.” He pounds his chest with his fist, twice, and raises it. 

“That’s the Black Power salute,” Artie clarifies. 

Puck glares at him. “Dude, just ‘cause we’re trying out this James Dean/McLovin friend mashup thing doesn’t mean you get to correct me in front of chicks.”

Artie looks at Tina, mouths  _McLovin? Really?_ Tina smiles a little and rolls her eyes, although it’s not really clear who she’s exasperated by, Puck or Artie. Maybe both.

“Um, Rachel?” she asks, hesitantly. “I’ve got to get back home in like, an hour, so maybe you could tell us why it’s so important that we’re here. On Christmas day.”

Rachel straightens in her chair, her posture so perfect even Sue, watching with narrowed eyes, can’t find much fault with it. “Tina, that’s  _precisely_ why I’ve asked the three of you here. This time of year, when we’re being bombarded with Santas and church pamphlets and Christmas carols – carols  _especially_ –it’s so important to surround ourselves with our community. Therefore, I propose we form, even for just this one day, an offshoot of glee club dedicated to expressing Jewish faith, customs and traditions through song.” She gestures towards the hefty stack of sheet music in front of her. “I’ve collected what I believe are some of the most significant works produced by the Jewish people, everything from songs of prayer to modern Israeli groups to Simon and Garfunkel.”

“You know who’s a Jew?” Puck says, brightly, and waits for someone to guess. When no one does, he declares, “Dee Snider. Dee Snider from Twisted Sister is a Jew. Got any Twisted Sister in there? I would totally be down to sing some Twisted Sister.”

Rachel glares at him.

“Um.” Artie chews on his lower lip. “Are you saying you asked us here to sing Jewish stuff ‘cause you think we’re Jews?”

Sue’s rolling her eyes so hard they’ve nearly rotated to the back of her head. 

“Aren’t you?” Rachel asks him, and looks at Tina. “I mean, Tina, part of your last name is Cohen, and Artie, your last name is Abrams, so I just assumed –”

“Not Jewish,” Artie says. “I mean, I’m down with the Jews and all. I’ve got some Matisyahu on my iPod. But my folks are twice-a-year Protestants.”

“And my dad’s Jewish, I guess,” Tina adds, “but I don’t think he’s ever practiced. My mom’s pretty into Christianity, so that’s the way I was raised.”

“DONE,” Sue yells, throwing her hands up, and turns to Imitation Brittany. “I’m  _done_. It's like watching the Nuremberg Trials, only with more references to Jews and less appealing people. Did I  _die_ and it turns out hell is actually Rachel Berry’s dining room?”

“No,” Brittany says, seriously. “Just a few more minutes. Watch.” 

Tina’s standing up. “Look, Rachel, I appreciate that you invited me over, but – I really need to get home.”

“You said you had an hour,” Rachel insists. She’s pushing the sheet music away, just a bit. “We don’t really need to sing Jewish songs. I’m sorry I made those assumptions. We could – hang out. Do something you like to do.”

“Honestly,” Tina tells her, quietly, “what I’d like to do right now is be home.”

“Read between the lines, Berry,” Puck stage-whispers. “She’s trying to tell you she doesn’t want to hang out with you ‘cause you’re pushy and loud and your favorite person is yourself and no one really likes you, except for Finn, and I’m pretty sure even he’s getting kinda tired of you.”

Rachel’s face falls. Sue’s not going to waste any energy feeling emotions on behalf of Rachel Berry, of all people. She’s just _not_. Especially when Puckerman’s right about the pushy and loud and unlikable thing. Even when Berry’s got a look on her like someone told her Barbra Streisand ruptured her vocal chords. Even then.

“They came over ‘cause I asked them,” Puck continues. 

“I didn’t  _say_ that, any of that,” Tina cuts in. “Rachel, I just –”

“Don’t.” Rachel glares at Puck, and it’s not chastisement like earlier, it’s anger, real anger. “Don’t bother. You know, all of you are terribly quick to rush to Kurt’s aid when he’s getting kicked around by the neanderthals on the football team. You make a lot of pretty speeches about bullying on his behalf. What did I hear you say last week, Artie? ‘They hate us for being who we are.’ Wasn’t that it?”

“Yeah,” Artie mutters.

There are tears in Rachel’s eyes, and she’s blinking them back furiously. “Go home. All of three of you. Artie and Tina, you go celebrate Christmas with your families, and Puck, you eat Chinese food and watch reruns of  _Cagney and Lacey_  with your mother like you do every year. And you think about this: with the exception of Finn Hudson – and I don’t care what you say, Noah Puckerman, Finn  _loves_ me – all of you bully me. Just as much as the rest of the school does. You hate me for being who I am.”

“Hey,” Puck tries, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Berry –”

“Get  _out_ ,” she spits, and twists away from him.

They do, Puck pushing Artie through the archway, Tina looking back at Rachel like she wants to apologize but isn’t sure it’s the right thing to do. 

And then it’s just Rachel Berry and her sheet music: Rachel and Sue and Imitation Brittany. Rachel’s going to cry, now; Sue’s sure. It’s going to be awkward and noisy and make Sue even more uncomfortable than she already is.

Rachel doesn’t cry. She puts her hands over her face, just for a moment, and breathes in, deeply. 

“Focus on the goal, Rachel,” she says, to the empty room, and when she drops her hands her eyes are hard. “Focus on the goal.”

The thought blooms before Sue can check it, or the emotion that accompanies it: a little flood of approval. _Good girl, Berry._

“DONE,” sings Brittany, in a perfect replication of Sue’s earlier announcement, and she grabs Sue’s arm, her cold fingers tugging. 

Rachel and her dining room crinkle, break, contract, evaporate. 

  
__ 

Will Schuester’s couch is missing. 

Sue’s never seen the inside of her nemesis’s apartment, but she’s got an olfactory system on her that rivals Helen Keller’s, and she knows, before her eye catches Schuester curled up in an overstuffed recliner, that this sad little home belongs to Will. It smells just like him, like desperation and earnestness and collapse and the sharp, sweet scent of pomade. Her nose wrinkles in revulsion.

She knows the couch is missing because it’s left behind a dark impression on the carpet, a rectangular ghost of what used to be there. Of course the couch is missing. Even if Will might’ve salvaged the cushions, it’d take a certain special kind of masochist to keep the piece of furniture on which your wife killed herself. Even Will, who – if we’re completely being honest –has taken up with religious enthusiasm the doctrine of Poor Me; even Will wouldn’t do that to himself.

The doorbell rings, and Will, looking somewhat apprehensive, closes his book (a biography of Fanny Brice), leaving it on the arm of the chair. When he crosses the living room, he refrains, very noticeably, from looking at the vacant real estate in the middle of the floor. 

Imitation Brittany’s humming, under her breath. It takes Sue a second to recognize the tune:  _God rest ye merry, gentlemen; let nothing you dismay.  
_  
She hears, but can’t quite see, Finn Hudson at the door. “Hey, Mr. Schue. Merry Christmas. Mind if I come in for a minute?”

“Not at all, Finn,” Will says. He sounds exhausted. “Merry Christmas to you too. Come on in. Can I get you anything hot to drink? Tea, hot chocolate? It’s pretty darn freezing out there.” 

“Nah, thanks.” Finn walks into the living room, twisting his bomber hat between his hands, his face red from the cold. Will closes the door, his hand resting on it briefly – for support? Sue doesn’t know how to interpret that gesture. Not that she cares, really.

Finn looks at the vacant spot where the couch was, opens his mouth to ask a question, and then shuts it, quickly.  _Not completely stupid and tactless, then_ , Sue thinks, conveniently ignoring the very real possibility that, had she been in Finn Hudson’s place, she would’ve made some sharp comment, just for the cheap pleasure of seeing that look of hurt flush Will’s face. (She’s never been picky about the difficulty of her conquests. She doesn’t relish a challenge, just a victory.) 

“How can I help you, Finn?” Will asks, smiling faintly at him.

“So is this really what you’re doing for Christmas, Mr. Schue?” Finn blurts, gesturing towards the recliner and book. “You’re sitting by yourself reading when you could be with people who, you know, care about you?”

“I like reading. It’s not the worst way to spend a day off. And frankly, Finn, with the exception of yourself I’m not sure that dinner with your mom and you and Kurt and his dad would be surrounding myself with people who ‘care about me.’ But I really do appreciate that you invited me over, I do, honestly.”

Sue’s jaw drops in horror.  _Would you like to join us for dinner on Christmas Day? My dad and me? And Finn and his mom? We’re having tofurkey._  God, if she’d said yes to Kurt’s invitation, and if Will had said yes to Finn’s, she very well might have had to eat a meal at the same table with  _Will Schuester_. Maybe sitting next to him. Smelling his hair and his cheap off-brand cologne. She feels a little faint. 

“It’s not a pity invite, Mr. Schue,” says Finn, with surprising insight. 

Will laughs, a dry, mocking sound that makes Sue look at him, sharply. 

“It isn’t. Okay, so I care about Burt and all. He’s been really great. But if we’re talking father figures – ” He pauses, blushing. “You were there for me through the whole Quinn thing. You’re the one who taught me I was worth something beyond what I could do on the football field. Christmas is supposed to be about spending time with your family, right? Mr. Schue, you’re family.”

Sue grits her teeth; Finn’s saccharine is making them ache. She can’t help it: she tries to imagine Kurt Hummel, or Quinn, or any of her Cheerios, saying anything like this to her, and the thought of it is so ludicrous she almost laughs. 

“That’s really nice of you to say, Finn.” God, Will’s eyes are  _watering_. Sue shifts in place, fidgeting, uncomfortable. “You know I feel the same. About all of you kids,” he adds, quickly. 

 _Right_. At least, Sue thinks, disdainfully,  _she_ admits to having favorites. (She makes a yearly competition out of it, in fact, where her Cheerios engage in a wrestling match complete with high kicks and pyrotechnics in order to secure the title.) Will’s favoritism is just as obvious, but his refusal to admit it maddens her. 

When Will, sounding almost reluctant, accepts Finn’s inflexible invitation, Sue isn’t surprised. She even understands, a little. Spending Christmas here, in this misery crucible, isn’t anyone’s idea of a good night off. Even the denim-clad Hummel-Hudson clan presents a better option. 

“You could still go too, you know,” Imitation Brittany pipes up. She’s got a finger in her ponytail, twirling the curled strands. “It’s not too late to change your mind. Maybe they’ll have yams. Did you know yams are potatoes with the sun inside them?”

Sue disregards this dadaist  _bòn mót_.“I don’t belong,” she snaps. “I’m not  _family_.”

“Sleep on it,” Brittany tells her, smiling, and just like that Will and Finn and Brittany are gone; Sue’s tumbling into her bed, legs tangled in the loose comforter, the wind knocked out of her with the exertion of quick transit.

This time, she dreams: Rachel Berry, looking up at her.  _What’s the goal, Sue_? she asks, plaintively, and Sue tries to answer but can’t.

 

 


	5. Wherein the Olivia Newton-John of Christmas Future Harrows Sue with Visions of What Is Yet To Be

Something’s wrong.

Nothing, of course, has been precisely  _right_  since Terri Schuester made her appearance in Sue’s living room with a blown-apart jaw and a boredom-induced plan, but this is different. This breaks the pattern of the last two nights: her new normal, where she wakes up in her bed at one in the morning and speaks to dead duplicates of her students.

Sue finds herself in the middle of an empty hallway at McKinley, a hallway she should recognize. She knows these hallways, intimately, better than she knows the map of the thin gray veins on the back of her hands. She’s studied the McKinley blueprints for enough years, stalked countless students through and around these simple routes, planted microphones and cameras and – on one particularly serious occasion that called for extreme measures – an acetone tricycloperoxyde-based explosive device. But this hallway’s off. It’s close to right, but it misses the mark. The lockers are the wrong color. The drinking fountain’s missing. 

There’s pressure on her shoulder, a thin, hard hand, and it’s entirely thanks to her black ops training that Sue resists the temptation to exclaim in surprise. She turns instead, a quick smooth spin on her heel, and when she sees who’s come to meet her she exhales a short huff of breath, a sound like incredulity.

Olivia Newton-John. Or, Sue supposes, some kind of ghost thing that’s assumed the body of Olivia Newton-John, for God knows what reason. Kurt and Brittany: at least that made some vaguely-defined sense. They’re hers,  _her_  winners,  _her_  kids (no matter that she’d sooner stick pins in her eyes or have dinner with Kathie Lee Gifford than admit to any feelings of possessiveness). But Olivia? All Olivia’s ever done for her is renege on residuals and mock Sue's celebrity status, all while using what Sue is pretty sure is a blatantly phony accent. No one really  _sounds_  like that. Australia probably isn’t even  _real_ , just a PR sob story of a country made up to get legions of  _Grease_  watchers and  _Xanadu_  repentants feeling sympathetic.

Olivia looks back at her, clearly unintimidated by Sue’s scowl. She’s wearing all black, a simple outfit that looks more like a stagehand’s uniform than the wardrobe of an international recording artist and movie star (although Sue might argue that ‘movie star’ is a descriptor Olivia has in no way earned, and that ‘coked-up princess of autotune’ would be a more fitting title). 

“Well?” Sue asks, sharply. “What’ve you got to show me?”

Olivia raises her hand and points, behind Sue, to the trophy case. 

Most of the cups and plaques and ribbons are familiar to her like her own flesh. These are her brass children, her joys, born out of her immutable union with excellence. 2008 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS, MCKINLEY HIGH CHEERIOS. SUE SYLVESTER, COACH. 2009 NATIONALS. 2010 NATIONALS. Then, a series of new trophies: 2011 NATIONALS. 2012 NATIONALS. 2013 NATIONALS. 

 _2013?_  

Olivia draws her finger along the glass, towards the far right of the case, extending Sue’s line of vision. What she sees there is her first real indicator of what she’s known since she opened her eyes in this deserted McKinley hallway: something is very, very wrong. 

The next trophy is a smaller cup. Sue doesn’t recognize it at first. It’s been years since she’s had occasion to look at a second place trophy. She curls her lip in revulsion – second place, as far as she’s concerned, is as good as last place – and squints to read the inscription; it’s hard, without her glasses. 

Which is why she forces herself to read it again, not sure she’s seeing the right words. 

2014 TRI STATE RUNNER-UP, MCKINLEY HIGH CHEERIOS, the inscription reads. MAGGIE BEAM, COACH.

Sue whirls on Olivia, her jaw hanging in shock. “The  _only_  acceptable explanation for my name not being on this trophy,” she snarls, “would be the appointment of my future self by President Palin to the position of Secretary of Defense. Which, considering the highly sensitive, revealing and sexually-explicit emails I currently have in my possession, is a lot more likely than you might think.”

Olivia shakes her head, slowly. 

“Maggie  _Beam_ ,” Sue exhales. “That perky Xenadrine popper who coaches over at Lima High? No way in hell she’d ever replace me. Maggie Beam thinks a winning cheer routine is a couple of toe touch jumps and thigh stands set to Toni Basil. Brad _Childress_  made better coaching calls, for God’s sake.” She looks back at the trophy case. There’s another cup there, one she’d missed on her first, quick hungry scan. 2011 GLEE CLUB NATIONALS, FIRST PLACE. NEW DIRECTIONS, MCKINLEY HIGH. WILLIAM SCHUESTER, DIRECTOR. 

Well. So the Lollipop Guild had managed to eke out a win, despite Will Schuester’s crippling involvement. Maybe he’d finally realized that preparing for a competition meant selecting material and rehearsing months in advance, and dividing up songs not based on self-selected pairs of glee clubbers playing park the beef bus in tuna town with each other, but on which voices actually best fit together. (If it were up to her – not that Sue would ever, ever admit she’s spent her valuable time considering this – she’d fuse the astonishing egos of Hummel and Berry into a dueling duo. Give them some Sondheim, maybe. Santana, Mercedes and that wheelchair kid could do something interesting with TLC. It never ceases to amaze her how poorly Schuester manipulates the talent he’s been so unfairly granted.)

She looks at the etching of her name on the 2013 trophy. Her last trophy.

“What happened?” she asks Olivia, insistent. “What happened to me? And why in Madonna's holy name won’t you talk? I mean, we both know you sound completely ridiculous, but it’s not like that’s ever stopped you."

Olivia draws her pinched thumb and forefinger across her lips, the sign for  _zipped shut_. Sue watches her face carefully, looking for what she’d seen in Fake Kurt and Imitation Brittany: some kind of warmth, a little understanding. It’s not there. Olivia’s expression is grim, and suddenly Sue is glad Olivia is silent, because she doesn’t think she wants to listen to what Olivia might have to say.

 _If I’m not here anymore, then where the hell am I?_

Maybe Olivia hears her, because she places her cold hand between Sue’s shoulder blades, pressing her gently forward, down the hall, towards the door that leads outside.

  
__

She knows the answer to her question once she sees the gravestones lining the cemetery hill. It’s a bitterly cold morning, the dead ground laced with ice, and Sue wraps her arms around herself, shivering, shaking. 

Olivia indicates towards two figures standing together, swathed in heavy jackets, looking down at one particular stone. Sue peers at their red faces, flushed with cold, and pushes on towards them, unable to stop herself. Will. It’s Will. Older, and his lined, coarse face shows it, but it’s Will. And that tall man with a pursed mouth and the Hermès scarf – 

“Kurt,” she exhales, forgetting all her nicknames for him in that sharp, keening moment of recognition. Her bitchy, condescending elf of a student, somehow now this grown stranger. The vertigo of his transformation is disorienting, far more dramatic than Will’s gentle aging. 

She can hear their voices, pitched low for graveside appropriateness.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make the service,” Kurt’s saying, and he really does sound regretful. “I couldn’t get the time off of work, and I can’t afford to push any buttons – they’re looking for any excuse to let staff go right now. Honestly, I was lucky to get the half week off for Christmas.”

“I understand. Really, I do. I know you would’ve come if you could’ve.” There’s just the slightest stress on the first ‘you,’ and Sue wonders what Will’s inferring. Who else was invited to this service? Who wasn’t there? “I think she’d appreciate the fact that you’re here now.”

She doesn’t look at the gravestone. Not yet. She knows what’s written there. She doesn’t need to see it.

“So. Mr. Schue.” Kurt’s clearly uncomfortable, scuffs the ground a bit with his impeccable boot. “Finn says glee club isn’t around anymore? That's a shame.”

“Call me Will, Kurt. Please. Oh, it was never really the same after you kids graduated. There was some interest, but no one committed enough or, frankly, talented enough to keep the momentum going.” He looks down at the grave. “You know, once Figgins officially declared the club dead, she hired the Lima Chorale to stand outside my office and sing the Hallelujah Chorus. I’m not sure she really appreciated the irony.” 

Kurt smiles, faintly. “Probably not. Irony was never her strong suit.”

“At least they sounded great,” Will adds, with a crooked half-grin.

 _And avoiding humiliation was never your strong suit_ , Kurt clearly wants to say, but doesn’t. “I heard about her retirement, all those years back,” he offers, instead. “Dad emailed me a link to an article on the Lima Ledger. I never figured she’d voluntarily give up her job.” 

“She didn’t. Not exactly.” 

Will tells stories like they’re monologues, like they're his last, best chance to perform. He sighs, turns to face his former student, looking appropriately dejected as befits a recital of the Tragedy of Sue Sylvester. Sue’s got her epic eye-rolling all prepared; her pupils are contracting in ready anticipation, and that’s when his first sentence impacts her like a fist to the solar plexus. She’s suddenly reaching for breath. Dizzy. Her chest aches. She hears fragments. 

“It was after her sister died. Wouldn’t answer her door for nearly a week. When she came back to work she was – well,  _different_. Weirdly quiet. We tried, you know. Emma and Shannon and I. We stopped by her office to tell her how sorry we were and if there was anything we could do – you know. In retrospect it was a pretty weak effort, I suppose. She wouldn’t look at us, at first. I remember Emma said something like she could imagine how painful this was for Sue, to lose someone so special. She turned to face Emma then, and her expression – God, there was something just awful about it. Made my stomach turn over.”

The worst of it is that Sue can see this happening.  _The Three Stooges_ , she thinks, sneering.  _Curly, Princess Mononoke, and One Hit Wanda the Roller Derby Queen, all of them feeling just so goddamned_  sorry  _for me. Thinking they could actually make it better, make something like finally losing Jean_  – and the barbed thought is too sharp; she can’t keep it alive, and she curls her fingers into her thighs, nails digging little crescents through the polyester of her track suit pants. The sting is good. Reassuring.

“She told us to get out, and we did. She avoided me – all of us – after that. No teasing. No nicknames. No more jokes about my hair. Didn’t seem to have any interest in anything but her Cheerios and winning and Nationals. And then a few months later Jessica Paley had that heart attack during practice.”

Kurt’s face registers surprise.

“Didn’t you hear about that? I would’ve guessed someone – Finn – would’ve told you. I think he knew Jessica. She was a few years behind you guys.”

“I was – pretty busy trying to establish a new life for myself during college,” Kurt says, hesitantly. “A new start. Finn and I didn’t see or talk to each other much during the school year.”

Will makes an affirmative noise that’s supposed to indicate he understands, when he clearly doesn’t. “Anyway,” he continues, quickly, “it all came out then. What Sue’d been doing to her squad – the liquid diets, the weigh-ins. She’d doubled the number of practice hours, and I guess the kids’ bodies couldn’t take it. Jessica’s parents were furious, and Figgins managed, for maybe the first time ever, to untie his hands, so Sue got suspended.”

Sue’s mouth stings with dread, tanging on her tongue like copper.

“The school board ruled that she’d only be allowed to return if her budget was drastically reduced, and if she’d accept the appointment of an assistant coach. She refused. Resigned.” 

“Hardly shocking,” Kurt observes. “Coach Sylvester would rather set a routine to the greatest hits of Pat Boone than accept a glorified hall monitor policing her practices.” 

“I figured she thought they’d call her bluff. But they didn’t. Figgins hired Maggie Beam a few days later.” Will scuffs his shoe in the dirt, pushing earth toward the grave edge. “Not much more to it than that. I saw her around over the years. In the supermarket. Once at the park, sitting at a picnic table. She stopped wearing her track suits, you know.”

Kurt’s eyes widen. “ _No_ ,” he gasps. This, somehow, is clearly the most horrifying thing to him: the loss of Sue’s battle armor, the peeling of her skin. Sue, watching, reacts with similar dismay, pressing her hand over her heart, feeling the smooth slide of her jacket.

Will nods. “Yeah. Weird seeing her in civilian clothes. She looked smaller, somehow. Diminished.”

Sue tries to do some quick math in her head, but she’s missing some important numbers. If she’d resigned ( _lost_ ) her job maybe a year or two after Hummel and the rest of Schuester’s muppet babies graduated McKinley –  _all those years back_ , Kurt had said. How many years? How long had she existed, stripped of everything she valued?

She forces herself to look down at the flat slab of granite with her name on it, with her year of birth and her year of reckoning. 

Thirteen years, she realizes, staring at the numbers. The horror of it fills her throat and chest. Thirteen  _years_  without carving beautiful geometry from the gawky, malleable bodies of teenagers; without waging war in overbuilt gymnasiums with confetti cannons and sparklers; without joyfully mocking Will Schuester’s hideous lifestyle choices. 

Thirteen years without her Jeanie. 

The inscription below her name does not read LEGEND, as her will currently requests, or EVEN DECAYING, I’M STILL BETTER THAN YOU, the other option she’s considered, but a simple and plain BELOVED SISTER.

“She’d listed me as her next of kin,” Will’s saying, softly. “I took care of things, picked out the marker – I thought she’d like that inscription. I put the funeral service together, contacted some of her former students, some other people she used to spend time with. In the end, it was just me, Emma and Becky Jackson – you remember Becky, right? No one else came.” 

Sue’s not listening. She’s staring at the grave next to hers, a darker stone with sharper lettering. 

JEAN SYLVESTER  
1957-2013  
ALWAYS

“I can’t,” she says out loud, her voice cracking, and sinks to her knees, touching the frozen granite. Olivia’s impassive face watches her. “Believe me when I say this, Newton-John, or whatever you are, because right now I’m as about as serious as a Very Special Episode of  _Diff’rent Strokes_  about child molestation. I  _can’t_  live like that. I  _won’t_.”

She looks from Olivia to Will, whose features are twisted in pity, pity she knows is specially reserved for poor dead Sue Sylvester. The horror of Will Schuester, of all people, pitying her – it’s like monkeys evolving from humans or a Republican senator inclined towards compromise: a monstrous crime of nature. 

She imagines Will watching her depleted self wander the aisles at the supermarket, imagines him placidly arranging her funeral ( _next of kin?_  she wonders, briefly, distracted.  _Why the hell had she ever given him that honor?_ ), thinks of him in bed at night spooning against jellyfish Emma, sighing  _poor Sue, poor poor woman, what an awful way to go, all alone._

As always, it's Will who gives her the resolve she needs.

“Give me your freakishly cold hand, Xanadon’t,” Sue demands, clearing her throat. “If there’s anything that I’ve learned from the Queen of Pop – not  _you_ , Newton-John, the  _Material_  Girl – it’s that every once in a while, you’ve got to reinvent yourself. Also offend the Pope and establish an enormous gay following, but I can do that later.” 

She grabs for Olivia’s hand, pulls herself up off Jean’s gravestone, and the rush of the movement catapults her into and through Olivia, through the black of Olivia’s clothes into the black of her bedroom, into the dark of her sheets and her pillow, still warm.

 

 


	6. Wherein Sue Goes Visiting, Most Notably at the Home of the Hummel-Hudson Family

The light wakes her, brilliant and sharp across Sue’s face. She blinks, squinting, and turns on her side, rumpling the sheets in her hands. This is her bed. This is her morning, all hers, with sunshine and no ghosts. 

She uncurls her left fist, revealing a crumpled purple paper snowflake. It takes her a moment, but she recognizes it: one of Imitation Brittany’s decorations. An unsubtle reminder that the events of the last three nights weren't some bad dream brought on by too much raw egg in her protein shake.

Her championship ring glints on her finger, and Sue looks closely at the metal, thinks of the red and white bodies of her Cheerios, beautifully straight arms and legs creating right angles, perfect diagonals. When, last year, she’d heard through carefully collected intel that the Cheerios’ biggest competition at Nationals was planning on including actual fireworks in their performance, she’d scrapped her plans for sparkler-enhanced tucks, placing Kurt Hummel and his freakishly high vocals front and center. 

Sue Sylvester knows this rule better than anyone: survival necessitates adapting, but winning demands reinvention. 

Her phone tells her the date is the twenty-fifth, but Sue’s not about to trust her own eyes, not after the events of the past three nights, and so she scrolls quickly through her contacts, settling on one entry. 

 **To: medium talent <7:04>**  
Josh Groban   
 **To: medium talent <7:04>**  
Tell me what day it is  
 **To: medium talent <7:05>**  
And don’t quote your sappy lounge singer lyrics at me again or I will physically break you into pieces and feed you to Sandy Ryerson

He takes less than a minute to respond. 

 **From: medium talent <7:06>**  
Did you have too much eggnog last night   
 **From: medium talent <7:06>**  
It’s christmas day??? duh  
 **From: medium talent <7:08>**  
Btw I’ll be in lima for a show just after the new year. What say u and I play a little ‘u raise me up’ in my hotel room while im in town  
 **From: medium talent <7:10>**  
Sue?  
 **From: medium talent <7:11>**  
Im sorry that was a really awful line  
 **From: medium talent <7:12>**  
Please dont be mad  
 **From: medium talent <7:15>**  
. . . sue?

She’s silenced her ringer, placed the phone back on the nightstand. Josh Groban and his bizarre co-dependency issues can wait. There are other, more important matters to attend to. Jean. She needs to talk to Jean. Also, she’s got a dinner invitation for tonight from a castrato sophomore and his sitcom-ready blended family. Maybe tofurkey isn’t that awful, after all. Probably has less calories than regular turkey.

Sue Sylvester is smiling to herself. For once, it’s not because someone else is unhappy. 

Just a little smile, and she wouldn’t admit to it under oath in a courtroom – no witnesses – but there it is: her mouth curving upward, her face softening.

_

  
 _Running_ , Sue’s mother had informed her once,  _is for people who need to catch up. Winners never need to catch up_. She tells herself this as she breaks into a jog across the nursing home parking lot, forcing herself to slow down to a speedy walk. Jean will be right where Sue’s left her, as Jean always is. Running means she’s giving into that kernel of nerves clustered in her stomach, leftover remnants of the fright she’d felt looking down at Jeanie’s grave. Running means that Sue’s coming from behind.

Myrna calls after her as she rushes past the front desk, bypassing the sign-in sheet – “Wait, Sue, visitor’s hours aren’t until this afternoon!” – and she waves her off, barreling her way into Jean’s room. 

Jean’s sitting at her craft table, hunched over strips of felt and ribbon, Christmas colors. She looks up, sees Sue, and grins, widely. “You’re early,” she chastises, but it’s a playful rebuke. 

“I know. I needed to see you. I needed to talk to you. Jean – ” She breaks off; tries again. “I’m sorry. For a lot of things.”

Jean looks confused. “For what? What did you do wrong?”

The walls, Sue notices, are decorated with pinned-up paper chain links, green and red interlocking circles. They worked in tandem this week without knowing it, the Sylvester sisters, both making chains: Jean with paper, Sue with her Cheerios. “I don’t visit you enough,” she says, sitting on the edge of Jean’s bed, scanning the carefully assembled chains. “I don’t stay long enough when I do visit. And – I couldn’t protect you from Mom and Dad.” 

“But you visit me a  _lot_.” Jean scrunches her face in confusion, the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes deepening. There’s almost nothing left of that seventeen-year-old girl Sue’d seen a shadow of just a few nights ago: that girl who stood up so straight and could run fast, almost fast enough to beat her little sister in a race across the backyard. She stares at the slumped curve of Jean’s knobby shoulders and her bird-thin collarbones, fine and small like smooth white twigs. 

Sue suddenly wants to say  _Don’t die_ , but she knows it would scare Jean, make her think her degeneration’s progressing more rapidly than it is, and so she simply reaches over, takes Jean’s small hand in her own. She knows the words on the tip of her tongue are a stupid impulse, anyway, like a child’s request to a God who isn’t there.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, instead, and she squeezes Jean’s fingers. “Honey, I just don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Jean squeezes back, looking closely at her sister, searching for something in her face. Sue flinches, averting her eyes.

“Someday,” Jean says, seriously, “I won’t be here. And when I’m gone you need to be all right. Okay, Susie? Please?”

Sue purses her lips together, tightly. 

“Okay,” she manages, after a moment. “I can do that.”

She doesn’t correct the nickname.

_

  
When one of Rachel Berry’s dads opens the front door, looking for the person who’s rung the bell, he finds an envelope on top of the welcome mat with his daughter’s name scrawled on the front.

He tears it open (Hiram is a concerned parent who would prefer to protect his daughter from potentially hurtful or inappropriate messages, many of which have made their way to his doormat since Rachel began junior high), and finds two twenty dollar bills. There’s a folded note between them. 

 _For your charity_ , it reads. There’s a word crossed out before ‘charity,’ and squinting, Hiram thinks he can make out the first and last letters of  _dumb_. Another pen mark below the sentence, as if the writer of the note had started to add another line, but thought better of it. No signature. 

“Sweetheart?” he calls, turning back inside. “You’ve got your first anonymous benefactor.” 

Rachel, Hiram knows, will be pleased.

_ 

  
The second time Sue rings a doorbell that day, she keeps her feet planted.

Kurt’s face is worth it. His eyes, when he sees Sue, are wider than Emma Pillsbury’s, which Sue is fairly certain might be illegal, or, at the very least, highly amusing.

“Coach,” he says, slowly. “I, uh, thought you said you were going to Mexico?”

Sue shrugs. “I don’t know, the ocean pisses me off. Too blue. And I couldn’t  _stand_ the thought of not seeing your over-exfoliated face gawking at me for the two whole weeks of Christmas vacation, so here I am.” She shoves a wrapped rectangle at him. “Brought you a hostess gift, kiddo. Wanna guess what it is?”

“I couldn’t possibly,” Kurt manages, turning over the present. 

“The 2011 Sue Sylvester calendar, featuring pictures of yours truly from editorials, magazine shoots and never-before-seen images. An outstanding, quality product that Target will absolutely regret not choosing to carry this holiday season, after Gloria Allred and I sue them for gender discrimination. Possibly sexual harassment, too, but I haven’t decided on that yet.”

“Uh, thank you?  _Dad_ ,” Kurt calls, and the word sounds more like  _help_. 

“Who’s that at the door, son?” booms a voice from somewhere to Kurt’s left. 

“My, uh – ” Kurt’s struggling to find the right word. “It’s Ms. Sylvester. Remember, I told you I invited her for dinner?”

“You wanna let me inside?” Sue asks, archly, stamping her feet. “It’s colder than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s nutsack in a headwind out here.”

Burt Hummel appears, folding his arm around Kurt, who appears to have briefly lost the capacity for speech. “Since my kid,” he says, smiling at her, and drawing the door open wider, “has apparently forgotten his manners, allow me. Please come inside, and welcome.” 

She does, shaking the flakes of snow from her hair as the door closes behind her. Kurt absconds quickly down the hallway, clutching her calendar. 

Sue’s pretty sure she’s supposed to say something nice at this point, like  _thanks for having me_  or _what a nice house this is_ , but pleasantries are as foreign to her as failure, and so she tells Burt Hummel that she’s prepared a list of Christmas elf nicknames for his son (which is true, but something of a non sequitur). “My favorite is Tumblesnoot Sugarflounce,” she adds. 

Burt takes Sue’s jacket and scarf, brow knit slightly in confusion, and suggests that she might want to sit on the couch; he’ll be happy to have Finn or Kurt bring her a drink while he grabs an extra chair out of the garage (Carole’s made a mean pot of hot buttered rum, with nutmeg instead of cloves), and actually, there’s already someone in the living room Burt’s sure Sue will be happy to see. 

Of course, it’s Will Schuester, sitting with his knees together and a steaming mug in his hands. He turns to face her as she enters the room. Sue immediately feels the urge to shove tinsel in his slightly ajar mouth.

“Will, dear God, that  _sweater_ ,” she groans. “It’s like Santa drank a whole bunch of red fruit punch and crème de menthe, topped it off with a buffet of plaid, and then violently puked it all back up onto your bizarrely box-shaped torso.” If this were anyone else other than Will, she’d be pretty sure that choice of a Christmas vest was ironic. 

Will takes a long swig out of his mug. “Hi, Sue,” he says, heavily, after he’s swallowed. “I think I need another one of these, Finn, if you don’t mind.”

Until Will said his name, Sue hadn’t noticed Finn Hudson, who’s over by the fireplace looking at Will with a slightly voyeuristic gleam in his eyes, like he can’t believe his teacher is actually in his house, drinking  _alcohol_. “Sure thing, Mr. Schue,” he chirps, reaching over to take Will’s glass from him, and he bounds off into the kitchen. 

“Don’t sneak any sips while you’re in there!” Will calls after him, and turns back to Sue. “I’m guessing Kurt invited you?” 

She’d have to be deaf not to hear the note of jealousy in his question. Will doesn’t like the idea of sharing any of  _his_ kids. Not that she’s thrilled about the unholy trinity of Quinn, Santana and Brittany spending their time on vocal runs instead of heel stretch pull downs, but of course that’s never occurred to Will. “Yes. And Ryan Leaf in there invited you, huh?”

“Guess he thought I didn’t have anywhere else to go today.” He laughs, that same bitter laugh Sue had heard from him two nights earlier, and she knows he's thinking about Terri. “Same with you, huh?”

“Yeah,” she admits, after a beat, surprising them both. “Same with me.”

Will looks up at her, eyes narrowed slightly. “Have a seat,” he says, warily, and pats the cushion next to him. Sue takes it, stretching her legs out under the oak coffee table. There’s a television against the wall, tuned to the Bengals-Seahawks game. She watches Chad Ochocinco catch a shaky pass for a first down; he fist-pumps, happily.

Finn returns with two cups, handing one to Will, the other to Sue. The buttered rum’s nice and strong, just the way she likes her drinks: a warm punch to the chest. She wraps her hands around the mug, letting the heat sink into her palms. “Not bad, Finnegan’s Wake,” she concedes. “Tell your mom I approve.”

On the television, a Seahawks linebacker slams into the Bengals’ quarterback, planting him face down in the frozen turf. Will and Finn groan, loudly.

“What happened what happened what happened?” Carole Hudson rushes into the living room, squeezing a dishtowel in her hands. She’s wearing a red, white and green apron with the printed message  _I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, but if the white runs out I’ll drink red_.

“Palmer got sacked,” Finn informs her, blearily. “On third down. Bengals gotta punt.” 

“I hope the sun bleaches your BONES, Carson Palmer, you incompetent ASSHOLE,” Carole yells, throwing her dishtowel at the television, and storms back into the kitchen. 

“Mom!” Finn exclaims, embarrassed. He looks at Sue and Will. “She’s kind of obsessed with football. The Bengals. It’s a love/hate thing with her.”

Will smiles. “I’m a Browns man, myself. I understand.” 

Sue doesn’t, because she’s a Patriots fan (no losing teams for her; also she deeply admires Bill Belichick and his utter lack of concern for things like rules and fair play), but she keeps quiet for once, taking another swallow of hot rum. 

The three of them watch the Seahawks’ punt returner run the ball past the 40 yard line.

“Bengals,” Finn says to Will with a grin, his tone indicating  _what can you do?_ The two of them have a language, Sue notices, not unlike the one she has with Kurt. She knows she's got the better deal, because she and Kurt don't do the whole fumbling and goofy smirks thing, and certainly they have better fashion sense (although she’s been meaning to speak to Kurt when she gets a chance about his penchant for Marc Jacobs, because  _honestly_ , the child needs to learn the meaning of 'diversify').

 _This is kind of okay_ , she admits to herself, and when Will and Finn look at her with identical shocked expressions, Sue realizes, too late, that she’s spoken aloud.

_

  
The six of them sit at the small dining room table, adorned with silver candlesticks, mini wreaths of holly, and what Sue assumes is Burt and Carole’s best china. Kurt sits to her left, Will to her right. 

When Burt suggests they say a circle grace together before digging in, Sue’s surprised at how readily Kurt grabs her hand. Partly because she would’ve thought Kurt would protest praying before a meal, and partly because she’s never thought of him as someone who’s okay with being touched. 

 _Hey, when in Rome_ , Sue thinks, and offers Will her right hand, silently. After a brief hesitation, he takes it, clasping her fingers with his. 

“I hope plaid’s not catching,” she whispers to him. 

She’s not sure, exactly, what she’s supposed to do in this situation. Sue doesn’t pray; she gave all that up years ago, long before her parents started skipping town on a regular basis, long before the name-calling and the high school hallway gauntlets. The thought of it makes her feel foolish, embarrassed she was ever gullible enough, even as a child, to believe that there was someone listening.

Burt clears his throat. “Well,” he begins, “I’ll make this brief, because if you all are as hungry for Carole’s mashed potatoes as I am, you’ll be happy for me to get right to the point.”

“Hear, hear,” Finn cheers. Kurt beams, and Sue looks at him, surprised, fairly sure she’s never seen him smile wider than a faint tug of the mouth.

“We’ve had a hell of a year, haven’t we?” Burt looks at Carole, at Finn, and then at Kurt, smiling. “I don’t want to elaborate or I’ll get emotional – I just want to say how blessed I am to be here with you, with the greatest family a guy could ask for. And to our guests – ” He nods at Sue and Will. “Welcome to our table. We’re glad you could celebrate the day with us.”

“Thank you,” Will says, softly. 

Sue nods, a curt incline of her head. 

“Let’s dig in,” Burt booms, and releases Carole and Kurt’s hands. 

Sue discovers several things over dinner: the first, that tofurkey really isn’t as offensive to the tastebuds as she’d thought; the second, that she shares with Burt Hummel a bizarrely intense affection for  _Top Gear_ ; and third, that Will is much more tolerable when she’s on her fourth mug of hot buttered rum. Almost likable, even. She particularly enjoys the deep shade of red that floods his neck and face when, after he concedes that maybe being married to yourself gives you a better chance at happiness than with a partner, she leers, “Yeah, and let me tell you, buddy, the sex is  _fantastic_.”

(To her left, Kurt makes a choking sound and starts to cough. Well, she’d warned him when he’d invited her.)

At some point in the evening, she ruffles Will’s curly head with her hand and asks him for conditioning tips. The funny thing is, she even means it, just a little.

 _When I’m gone, you need to be all right._

Sue Sylvester will be better than all right. She’ll win.

 


End file.
